Princeton University will be home to a new $20 million energy research center for combustion science, as part of a federal initiative to spur discoveries that lay the groundwork for an economy based on clean replacements for fossil fuels.

In his office, MIT Professor of Chemical Engineering Gregory Rutledge keeps a small piece of fabric that at first glance resembles a Kleenex. This tissue-like material, softer than silk, is composed of fibers that are a thousand times thinner than a human hair and holds promise for a wide range of applications including protective clothing, drug delivery and tissue engineering.

Until now, extracting as many proteins as possible from biological samples has required a combination of several methods. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry have now developed a new universally employable sample preparation method that combines the advantages of the usual methods and allows an unprecedented depth of proteome coverage.

U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory researcher John W. Lewellen was recently named a recipient of the U.S. Particle Accelerator School (USPAS) Prize in Accelerator Physics and Technology.

Researchers have demonstrated, for the first time, that the activation energy of impurities in semiconductor nanowires is affected by the surrounding dielectric and can be modified by the choice of the nanowire embedding medium.

The Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH) and IVAM Microtechnology Network have concluded a cooperation agreement on April 22, 2009 at MicroTechnology/HANNOVER MESSE in Hanover, Germany. Both organizations want to accelerate the information exchange between their high-tech countries with this.

Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a membrane-penetrating nanoneedle for the targeted delivery of one or more molecules into the cytoplasm or the nucleus of living cells. In addition to ferrying tiny amounts of cargo, the nanoneedle can also be used as an electrochemical probe and as an optical biosensor.